If you have visited this blog since the new year began, you might have noticed a new series of pages in the top menu. It’s part of a new concept I would dearly like to develop, which should provide more opportunities for authors to find paying work as well as giving readers more influence over the books that get written. I blogged about audience-driven book writing at the end of December, and now you can join with me to make the concept a reality.

I am accepting submissions for a new short-story anthology in the genre of military fiction (chosen mostly because it seemed to be underserved, compared to its reader base). The deadline for submission is March 1. Stories should be between 3,500 and 7,000 words long. Selected authors will be paid for publication rights. And in a few weeks, I will be launching a Kickstarter project to raise the funding for publication.

If you want to learn more about submitting your writing, check out the full description and short-story requirements here. And if you want to be notified when the Kickstarter project goes live (whether you are an author or a reader), sign up here. (If you want to suggest a new genre for the next anthology, please do so in the comments below.)

The full vision is for groups of readers to pool their funding, and pay authors to produce the works that they want to read. This anthology is Step One towards fully realizing that vision. For it to work, we need your stories—your talent, your craft, the vivid characters and gripping situations that you want to show the world.

If you have friends who are authors, or who are readers, please share this post and let them know of this opportunity. Again, this is a paying gig—and if the Kickstarter goes well, we may be able to publish stories from more authors than the minimum, making the anthology even more attractive for readers. This is not a zero-sum game; there are no limits. The more people who join together, the more that everybody wins.